Political Elite Plays Its Last Card

Conrad Black

Joe Biden is just a muddled amalgam of 40 years at the public trough, an arthritic wheelhorse in a machine that has broken down.

"Every day, the battle lines are drawn more clearly for what promises to be a memorable election. The Democrats infamously lumbered the president with an investigation into his relations with Russia that they knew to be unfounded. Then they attempted a completely spurious impeachment proceeding (with no believable evidence that he had committed the alleged offenses which, in any case, were not impeachable).

"And now, in response to a fortuitous virus pandemic, they purport to require President Trump to commit political suicide by shutting down the economy for so long that the soon-to-be 30 million unemployed will turn him out on election day.

"It is another phantasmagorical expedition of a desperate political elite playing its last card, but it is an engrossing spectacle.

"The Democrats’ war plan is emerging. It is the last stand of a party that has fought the most tenacious tooth-and-nail extension of a tight election in American political history.

"It seemed darkest after the Russian investigation and impeachment had floundered to their pitiful ends, and their chosen candidate stumbled badly while they were in danger of nominating a raving, though democratic, Marxist. Michael Bloomberg could only buy five delegates in American Samoa in a five-month, $937 million campaign extravaganza. Yet, somehow, the Democratic Party elders resurrected their lost leader, former Vice President Joe Biden, and carried him to the finish line in an impressive display of professional organization and party discipline.

Whatever Sticks

"Then the coronavirus epidemic miraculously appeared, just when all hope seemed lost . . ."

The Democrats will be left hoping for a flare-up of the disease and advocating policies certain to prolong economic misery. They have been outmaneuvered, though that is not obvious because of the indignity of the president’s bear-baiting sessions with his media enemies.